About this book

Introduction

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, American unions used the crisis of capitalism to recover power. Following the argument of British economist J.M.Keynes that capitalism could only be saved by raising aggregate demand, high wages and controlled inflation also became acceptable. Thus, during the Second World War government co-opted labour into running the war economy, and in the postwar years management co- opted unions into disciplining the workforce. This book examines the part unions played in creating the resulting consensus, and explains why both unions and consensus have recently declined.